42Race winning an award at a hackathon in China / Image Credit: 42Race

42Race even bagged several awards, such as the People’s Choice Award in Thack China 2015, People’s Choice Award in Startup Pitch, and Web-in-travel 2015 in Singapore.

But in the long run, they realised that this concept simply wasn’t sustainable and it racked up a lot of expenses for the company.

“We figured that instead of bringing people overseas for offline races, it’s better to create a platform where people from all over the world can come together to participate in a race,” said Augustine.

Pivoting Into Virtual Races

42Race started offering virtual races in 2016. It was a very new concept then, making them the first company in Singapore to offer it.

According to Augustine, the cost of organising virtual races is not as high as organising offline races.

“A virtual race does not incur costs such as fees for setting up road closures and water stations. As such, we do not need to get sponsorship to organise such races,” he said.

For those unacquainted, a virtual race allows runners to run anytime and anywhere, as long as they record their run with a GPS-enabled tracking app or device.

There’s no set pace and no set route, so it offers extreme flexibility and convenience for runners.

Image Credit: 42Race

Unlike marathon runners, you don’t have to deal with waking up early in the morning to get to the starting point, and jostle with other runners along the route.

Besides being less restrictive, virtual races are also much cheaper. Marathons typically cost about $45 and up, but 42Race has a low sign-up fee of $9.90 per entry.

An example of a 42Race pack / Image Credit: 42Race

Albeit ‘virtual’, racers still get to enjoy all the perks of a regular race, such as race bibs, goodie bags and medals.

After each race, participants can submit their record to 42Race. Upon verification, the team will mail medals to the participants who have completed the race; and provide finisher certificates that participants can download online.

However, virtual races have a higher risk of people cheating, so how do they prevent fraud?

“Our system compares runners’ average pace and distance, and alerts us if there are any discrepancies. The system will also alert the team if there are any abnormalities in the speed of runners,” Augustine told The Straits Times.

“Our staff will scrutinise each of these alerts, and also do random checks for every race. We will deactivate user accounts if they are found to have submitted fraudulent results.”

Expansion Is On The Business Map

Their pool of racers do not just hail from Singapore, but all across Southeast Asia, with a few others from Europe, North and South America as well.

Their recent Reebok: Be More Human Race surpassed past attendance rates; and for the first time ever, they “held a race for more than 7,000 users”.

Since this event, they also had many runners from Thailand joining them as well.

Although they broke their record, the team hopes to be able to reach a million participants in the future.

“We want to build a social network in which people around the world can take part in races together. And we want to create a race with millions of people running together from around the world,” said Augustine in an interview with The Straits Times.

He also expressed his dreams to “grow the community in various countries … and impact many more people.”

42Race is also looking at expanding their business further overseas, but said that they would need to factor in and address some concerns first.

“When expanding to a new country, we will need to localise our application to their native language. We will also need to solve logistics challenges such as finding the best way to deliver the medals to the users.”

“Sometimes, credit card penetration is low in the new country so we would need to incorporate new payment methods such as bank transfer into our platform as well.”

Augustine said that he also intends to bring more brandsonboard their platform so they can provide more value to their community.

When asked to impart a piece of business advice to fellow young entrepreneurs, Augustine said that “ideas are dime a dozen, [but] the execution itself is key.”

“It is important to have mentors to learn from and bounce ideas with. One of the most important qualities of an entrepreneur is grit – to never give up – and enjoy the journey ahead of you as much as you can. It’s tough, but also rewarding.”